AboutWelcome to Free Software Daily (FSD). FSD is a hub for news and articles by and for the free and open source community. FSD is a community driven site where members of the community submit and vote for the stories that they think are important and interesting to them. Click the "About" link to read more...

People contribute to free software in many ways. Some write the stuff; some write *about* the stuff, spreading the word; and some actually spread open source directly by giving away systems to those who need them. We hear a lot about the stars of first group, and the second group make a lot of noise on their own. But too often we take the third group for granted.

Maybe it’s a coincidence but this week has seen evidence of tension between commercial open source vendors and elements of the open source user community. Matt Asay stirred up something of a hornet’s nest with his post questioning how open source vendors can find ways of encouraging users to contribute either code of cash in return for free software

In many ways, MySQL embodies the ideals of the populist software movement known as open source, in which a program’s creator releases it to the world for free and legions of volunteers contribute improvements that are also freely shared.

If you're looking to polish your programming chops, what could possibly be better, more job-worthy experience than immersing yourself in a real live open source software project? There are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, and a few of them have arguably changed the world.

A company's decision to contribute to open source projects is usually business-driven. This article offers a review of the top reasons that can influence your company to contribute source code to open source or to start new open source projects.

We all know there are plenty of reasons to be in favor of open source software. It increases personal freedom, it helps people become better developers by sharing in the advances made by others, it provides many eyes to find bugs, it can respond more quickly to changing market demands, and so on. But what about reasons for corporations to get involved?

Following on from the success of the Google Summer of Code program, Google is pleased to announce this new effort to get young people involved in open source development. We've teamed up with the open source projects listed here to give student contestants the opportunity to learn more about and contribute to all aspects of open source software development